We like that people enjoy having alts. It's been a personal hobby of mine to continually level characters, and it's of course something a lot of people do. However, in some ways it works against some game systems that are intended to be a part of the MMO experience. Professions are one such system.

The intent with professions is that you can only have two, and for all the other professions you don't have you have to work with others within the game to get what you need. Say you're a blacksmith, and you can make an item another player or even that player's profession needs, and that interplay creates interpersonal interactions and even those small interactions feed into the larger social experience.

I had a good laugh reading this part. *hoooooo....*

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Over the years a number of things have changed and lessened those interactions based around professions, but probably none more impactful than alts. With good intentions to help people catch up to the end-game, it of course allows for people to have more alts with more professions, which in turn reduces reliance on others and shrinks the reasons you have to interact with others.

This may have been the original intent, but not true now.

Newsflash to Blizzard: Most people don't particularly care for relying on others (with perhaps the exception of raiding or PvP, but those are a whole different ball game).

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Most people don't keep tons of alts geared up for end-game,

I wonder whose fault that is.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

but quite a few do have alts that are there to help 'feed' their one or two main characters. Which is where the binding comes in. You're playing on one character, getting motes/spirits, and wanting to transfer those to alts to make stuff, which then feeds back to your main in either the items made, or the gold from selling them. That's totally understandable, but really fundamentally goes against the intent of profession limits.

You are correct about the "feeder" part, but bringing up the "prof limit was meant to really limiting" line again? Also, I don't just use my alts to feed my main or to (rarely) make gold off the auction house -- I use their professions for the character itself and to help out my other alts. It's like... an entire network for me.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

It can also lessen the personal value of playing and connecting with a character. When you have everything, your personal connection to any one of those things is diluted, and you naturally care a little less about each.

I care about all my characters, thank you very much. If I don't play some as often as others, it's typically because I don't have the time and have to prioritize.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

I understand that may be a hard sell because it's a limitation and not letting people do whatever they want, but it's at least logical. I think it is, anyway. Maybe one solution is we could say you can only have two professions per Battle.net account! And really strong arm people into it, but of course that'd be a pretty negative change in taking so much away.

While I know you're not being serious, what makes you think that those with the real-life money to do so would not just transfer a character to another account? For those that couldn't, it'd probably just be the final straw some need to quit WoW. And Blizzard wouldn't want to lose a decent amount of subscribers because, you know, money.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Instead saying here's an item that we really want you to earn and use on the character you're playing and obtained it with to reinforce the value in playing that character (and not just shipping items off to crafting alts). People still have crafting alts, of course, and some choose to play them a little just to seek out the motes/spirits, and that's ok.

Oh yeah, I sure am feeling the increased value. /sarcasm

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

What we don't want is to encourage the notion that you can just play one character and keep a cadre of alts that ensure you have everything you'll ever need. Working with others to achieve great things is by and large the overarching point of these kinds of games.

What a load of baloney. First you argued that having the motes/spirit BoP was because "them poor ol' profession folks just can't make gold if they ain't special". Now you're arguing about this whole grand "professions are intended to be meaningful" -- though they're not nearly so much as you think -- and "it's meant to be social and meant to have to rely on others".

Well here's my personal bit to you Blizz: I'm big on being self-reliant in a game. I'll sometimes help out a guildie if they ask and can do so, but I enjoy being able to rely on myself to provide for my in-game needs rather than crossing my fingers and hoping someone will lend me a hand.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

All that said we have tended to remove the soulbinding of these types of crafting materials as the expansion that introduced them draws to an end.

I sense that you may decide to keep them BoP past 5.4 just to be aggravating.

Seriously tho, I think they've found about the right balance with BoP reagents in MoP. Some professions gain more benefit from them then others, but I don't understand where people are coming from by claiming having profession alts is 'mandatory'. Who needs alts when you have guildmates you can rely on ?

Seriously tho, I think they've found about the right balance with BoP reagents in MoP. Some professions gain more benefit from them then others, but I don't understand where people are coming from by claiming having profession alts is 'mandatory'. Who needs alts when you have guildmates you can rely on ?

I don't recall coming across anyone making such a claim (though maybe if you're in a hard-core raiding guild?). But as to your question: People come and people go; guilds form and disappear. Those are factors that usually are outside one individual's control (unless you're an instigator of trouble or something). If a player has guildmates to be able to call on, great. For people such as myself, it's preferred to "take out the variables" so to speak. I'm not talking about being anti-social, but rather having greater control over one's in-game... needs, I guess you could say.

And I do enjoy my alts to varying degrees outside of maxing their professions.

This has no negatives besides your own private convenience. Long-term players already have every profession on their account which is bad for the community, as you don't have to rely on anybody but yourself. All the materials are from you, all the gems/enchants/glyphs and the craftable gear, from yourself, to yourself. I don't see how that is good thing in game where you are supposed to be interacting with other players. So with all due respect, please quit...and fast.

For some reason, musing about punishing players who spend a lot of time playing and leveling alts while your game is losing millions of players each year strikes me as pretty stupid.

Particularly because they cited casual players losing interest as a reason for the declines while people that level multiple characters for various skills are usually very invested.

The complaining in all of these thread makes me laugh. First of all, Spirits of Harmony are not hard to get at all and at no point ever had I been at a shortage of them. Second, the game is balanced around the idea of having 2 professions per character, and it is by no means necesarry to have all of them. Hell, professions themselves aren't even that useful in general. On most of my characters, less than 5% of my gold is made from professions, and I use little to none of the items I craft, and I have plenty of gold and am geared fine. Third, there are so many alternatives to dailies for getting gear that there is literally no objective way in existence to complain about them. It seems like people won't be happy unless they can faceroll 5mans and get free highest ilvl loot over the course op f 1 week. Guess what scrubs, gearing up should take a time commitment or a combination of luck and skill. But even apart from that, gearing up for normal raiding is already so ridiculously easy and hardly time consuming at all. Gearing past that SHOULD take a long time in game, and coordination with other players, which it currently does. I really hope all of these people complaining do quit the game. I'm surprised Blizzard hasn't given up responding to these childish complaints and simply responded with "learn to play noobs."

The thing that should really make you laugh is just how much you don't really understand the complaints. The hyperbole and all the stuff about how nobody should complain because YOU'RE happy is pretty great, too.

You can't discount the entire idea of running 5.0 LFR to gear up because drops are random. Sure you could still get some bad rolls and it may take you a bit longer, but there are many who (with a bunch of Elder Charms, aka bonus rolls) are able to completely gear up for ToT within two weeks.

If you want an absolutely reliable way to see an item, do something, and get that item no questions asked, you can do dailies to gain rep and get them for VP, but it's not going to be the quickest way.

This isn't a question of what you can and can't do, the only question is how you want to do it. The Catching Up to 5.3 blog assumes you want to gear up as quickly as possible.

This is quite possibly (and I say possibly because Blizz has told a shit ton of huge lies.) the biggest load of bullshit I have seen blue come out with.
I just ran HOF and ToES on my baby alt Pally in LFR, I saved 20 coins from the past few weeks so that I could go in and coin every boss and hopefully get some tier pieces or a trinket, but in hopes I could at least get geared enough to ToT next lock out.

I went 1/20 on loots...
Garalon helm being the only thing that dropped.

This is with the supposed chances being vastly upped...

Your full of it Blizz just like you were full of it when you say you have a 15% chance to get loot in LFR on a normal boss. I have been running LFR on my main and my main alt since the start and I have gotten 2 loots on my main and 1 on my main alt.
You can say RNG is RNG but at some point the percentages even out... and I personally havent seen it at all.

How about you put in a "catch up" mode that actually allows people to catch up... like dropping 496 valor gear to JP as you have in the past 3 expacs... quit being douchcanoes, I guess loosing 2 million subs isnt enough, you wanna alienate your entire subscription base with ignorant ideas like... "save your coins and roll on every boss you can get geared for ToT lfr in 2 weeks!!!"

The thing that should really make you laugh is just how much you don't really understand the complaints. The hyperbole and all the stuff about how nobody should complain because YOU'RE happy is pretty great, too.

What don't I understand? People are complaining that harmony is bop, even though it's in abundance and easy to acquire. They're complaining that having alts with all of the professions is mandatory, when it's clearly not if you're playing the game correctly. People are complaining that gear is gated behind dailies, when there are plenty of alternatives and gearing up for normal raiding is as easy as it's ever been.

The 'best' way to gain rep, imo, should be from a combination of dailies, dungeons, and raids. (Maybe scenarios and challenge modes, but I don't play anymore, so I have no real opinion on that.)

TBC was okay, but a long grind for some factions. Wrath was a step in the right direction. I quit during Cataclysm (vowing only to return if Blizzard implements a Demon Hunter class a la Illidan), but even that rep grind wasn't so bad. Actually, I think it was easier than Cataclysm, which tells me that maybe Wrath had it right. Typically, I think someone should be able to get Exalted within two weeks for the most part, maybe up to a month for more "exclusive" rep factions (ie. no need to change Netherwing, etc).

What they seem to have implemented here sounds like a pain in the ass for no reason.

Rep grinds are okay, but some of them are just ridiculous. I wonder if the bigger issue, though, is the amount of rep necessary from Revered to Exalted. It seems that lowering the required rep for that mark would make things a lot easier on players given the current situation. And if Blizzard wanted to, they could limit the dungeon/raid rep to Revered, and force dailies in order to get Exalted, or something.

Their attempts to make content last longer for the people that live for this game have served to add necessary elements to the gameplay (ie. make some things just a grindfest), and it's clearly not working, judging by the amount of people that express their unhappiness with it, and the frequency with which the issue arises.